work

Decyclage

Decyclage (June 2004)

"Decyclage" is a composition wherein various types of noise are explored. During the production of this piece I put in question: When we hear a lot of sounds together, from which point onward do our brains start to perceive a noise and give up hearing the sounds separately. For example: When a few people clap their hands, we hear each clap separately, when lots of people give applause, we perceive that as one sound, a noise. Decyclage explores the gray zone between these two auditory perceptions.

Different short sound clips, e.g. recordings of cutting fingernails, are precisely organized and spread out over sample banks and then loaded into a sampler. Each grain within a certain range of the sample bank is separately triggered with algorithmic composed MIDI scripts. These algorithms control the amount of the triggered samples in time. Other ways to generate noise were applying reverberation effect with an extreme long feedback tail and granular synthesis.

With "Decyclage" I graduated in 2004 for composition of electroacoustic music with Prof. Joris De Laet at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp. During the production of this work I developed different techniques to produce sound. At that time I already knew I would continue experimenting with these methods and 'recycle' them for future compositions. From there, the title "Decyclage" arose.